Warner Cable
Warner Cable formerly Time Warner Cable (TWC) is a American cable television company. Its corporate headquarters is located in the 30 Hudson Yards in West Side area of Manhattan, New York City, with other corporate offices in Stamford, Connecticut; Charlotte, North Carolina; Richardstown, North Carolina; and Herndon, Virginia. From 1971 to 1981, its predecessor Time Warner Cable, as Warner Cable, owned Dimension Pictures. History Time Warner Cable was formed in 1992 by the merger of Time Inc.'s cable television company, American Television and Communications Corp. (service areas that had belonged to that company went under the Time Warner Communications name; since the 1990s, areas that had used that name have either been renamed to Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, or have been given to other cable providers), and Warner Cable, a division of Warner Communications, as a result of a merger to form Time Warner; for the two years after the merger, the companies operated separately but under the umbrella name "Time Warner Cable Group" (primarily due to 18% of ATC having been publicly owned at the time); they merged into one entity in 1992. It also includes the remnants of the defunct QUBE interactive TV service. In 1995, the company launched the Southern Tier On-Line Community, a cable modem service later known as Road Runner High Speed Online. That year, talks began that would later result in Warner's acquisition of Paragon Cable. Glenn Britt (1949–2014) was the CEO from 2001 until December 2013. Time Warner retained Time Warner Cable as a subsidiary until March 2009, when it was spun out as an independent company. Prior to the spin-out, Time Warner had held an 84% stake in Time Warner Cable. Non-Time Warner shareholders received 0.083670 shares for each share already owned. This move made Time Warner Cable the largest cable operator in the United States owned solely by a single class of shareholders (without supervoting stock). Time Warner Cable launched DVR service in the Houston area in 2004. (TWC's Houston-area cable systems are now owned by Comcast.) When first launched, it used Scientific-Atlanta set-top boxes with DVR. In June 2009, Time Warner Cable unveiled a concept known as "TV Everywhere"—a means of allowing multi-platform access to live and on-demand content from television channels that is tied to a user's television subscription. Sale It was first reported in October 2013 that Time Warner Cable was exploring a sale of the company, possibly to Charter Communications. However, on November 22, 2013, reports surfaced that Comcast expressed interest in acquiring Time Warner Cable. Both companies were said to be placing bids for the company. Charter reiterated its interest in purchasing Time Warner Cable and increased its bid on January 14, 2014. On February 12, 2014, it was reported that Comcast had reached a deal to acquire TWC in an overall deal valued at $45.2 billion, pending regulatory approval. The proposed merger was met with prominent opposition from various groups, showing concerns that the sheer size of the combined company would reduce competition and would give Comcast an unprecedented level of control over the United States' internet and television industries, increased leverage in the distribution of NBCUniversal content, hamper over-the-top services, and lead to higher prices for its services. In April 2015, it was reported that the U.S. Department of Justice was preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against the companies in a bid to halt the merger, primarily because the merged company would have controlled 57 percent of the nation's broadband capacity. On April 24, 2015, Comcast officially announced that it had called off the merger. On May 25, 2015, Bloomberg News reported that Charter was "near" a deal to acquire TWC for $195 a share. Charter had been involved in the Comcast/TWC merger, as the companies planned to divest around 4 million subscribers to Charter in order to reduce the combined company's market share to an acceptable level. The next day, Charter officially announced its intent to acquire Time Warner Cable in a deal valued at $78.7 billion, and confirmed that it would also continue with its proposed, $10.1 billion acquisition of Bright House Networks. The deal was subject to regulatory approval, although due to the relatively smaller size of the companies and their media holdings, the deal was expected to face less resistance than the Comcast/TWC merger. The acquisition was completed on May 18, 2016. The Time Warner Cable brand was phased out in favor of Spectrum, the brand used by Charter since 2014 to market its services. Relaunch In 2018, Charter announced to make a new joint venture with WarnerMedia to relaunch some of Charter's underperforming Spectrum markets under the new name Warner Cable. Charter retained Spectrum Internet, Spectrum Mobile, and Spectrum News in these markets due to population of the Spectrum brand and to distinguish itself from its predecessors. Acquisitions Adelphia On July 31, 2006, Time Warner Cable and Comcast completed a deal to purchase practically all of Adelphia's assets for $17 billion. Time Warner Cable gained 3.3 million of Adelphia's subscribers, a 29 percent increase, while Comcast gained almost 1.7 million subscribers. Adelphia stockholders received 16% of Time Warner Cable. Time Warner Cable went public effective February 13, 2007, and the company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on March 1, 2007. In addition to Adelphia's coverage being divided up, Time Warner Cable and Comcast also agreed to exchange some of their own subscribers in order to consolidate key regions. An example of this is the Los Angeles market, which was mostly covered by Comcast and Adelphia (and some areas of the region already served by TWC), is now under Time Warner Cable. Philadelphia had been split between Time Warner and Comcast, with the majority of cable subscribers belonging to Comcast. Time Warner subscribers in Philadelphia were swapped with Comcast in early 2007. Similarly, the Houston area, which was under Time Warner, was swapped to Comcast, while the Dallas metro area was changed to Time Warner (RR). In the Twin Cities, Minneapolis was Time Warner and Saint Paul was Comcast. That whole market is now Comcast. NaviSite Time Warner Cable purchased NaviSite (NAVI), a company providing cloud and hosting services, on February 1, 2011 for $230 million, roughly equating to $5.50 per share. Insight Communications On August 13, 2011, Time Warner Cable announced its purchase of Insight Communications for $3 billion acquiring Insight's 760,000 subscribers nationwide. The merger was completed February 29, 2012, and as of June 2013 all of Insight Communications was absorbed into Time Warner Cable. DukeNet Communications On October 7, 2013, Time Warner Cable announced that it has agreed to acquire DukeNet Communications LLC for $600 million. DukeNet provides data and high-capacity bandwidth services to wireless carrier, data center, government, and enterprise customers in the Southeast. Advance/Newhouse and Time Warner (Bright House Networks spin off) Some of the regional cable system clusters operated by Time Warner Cable are owned by the Time Warner Entertainment – Advance/Newhouse Partnership (TWEAN). In 2002, Advance/Newhouse Communications, unhappy with some of the operating policies of Time Warner Cable in the AOL Time Warner era, forced a restructuring of the TWEAN partnership such that Advance/Newhouse would actively manage and operate a portion of the jointly owned cable systems equal to their percentage of equity. Under this arrangement, Advance/Newhouse enjoys the proceeds of their actively managed systems rather than simply a percentage of the partnership's total earnings. The majority of the affected systems were in the Indianapolis, Tampa and Orlando markets under the Bright House Networks brand. The value of this deal is that it allows Advance/Newhouse to more directly control their cable investments without having to completely unravel the TWEAN partnership, which does bring some benefits via Time Warner's development and purchasing clout. The transactions proposed by Charter were approved, TWC and Bright House Networks have been absorbed into Charter. Category:Cable providers Category:North Carolina Category:Richardstown, NC Category:Charter Communications Category:WarnerMedia